I was recently asked by an interesting B2B company to write some blog posts and new business direct mail thoughts. They were interesting because <a> they wanted to focus on a smarter, more intelligent, level of thinking in their communication <b> they truly had an ‘edge’ to them in terms of attitude, and <c> they were interested in taking on specific objections they hear day in and day out in a candid fashion. It was fun for me and I generated maybe 20 draft thoughts for them in less than 3 days. The following shares my favorites <in rough draft form and the name of the company removed>.

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Unlike B2C marketing, effective B2B marketing is pragmatic.

There is nothing subliminal in effective B2B selling & marketing. You aren’t supposed to “feel it.” You are meant to sense urgency and build trust and, ultimately, create pragmatic value.

We at Company X believe people who approach B2B with a consumer perspective get it wrong 2 ways:

– They define emotion wrong.

– They define hope wrong.

Emotion.

In the consumer world emotion is defined by ‘excitement, surprise, delight & ‘joy of discovery’ and invariably someone with a consumer background will want to discuss ‘creating an emotional connection.’

In the business world emotion is defined by respect, trust and pragmatic discovery. Yes, there is a pragmatic aspect in emotion. It is most often found in comfort, trust and sleeping well at night.

That is called ‘emotional security.’

<selling> … many dimensions, both practical (such as problem solving, the provision of information, and access to events, forums and workshops) and emotional, (including respect, friendship and a sense of partnership).
Individual relationships can be more important than the brand.

Millward Brown

Hope.

Anyone in marketing, B2B or B2C, is a dealer in hope because any potential customer wants to be better, do better or feel better.

In the consumer world hope is defined by ‘what if’ – reaching for something better.

In the business world hope is defined by ‘what should be’ – reaching for a better level.

In that distinction resides pragmatism. Any B2B initiative based on ‘what if’ will never be effective because businesses, and business decision makers, don’t seek dreams … they seek results.

‘What should be’ delivers upon the realistic hope of any business … better results.

Lastly.

Pragmatic selling.

Many businesses believe no one can ‘sell pragmatically’ unless they are an inside sales person. They are wrong. At its core pragmatism is based on facts, truth and understanding of what it is you are communicating. Nurturing future customers in a long buying process is engineered and not crafted.

The final sale is between the company and the business that is where the sale is crafted and the partnership is sealed. But ‘selling’ is the purview of those who are well educated in the product or solution and understand when to educate and when to sell <which is based on cues>.

Company X understands how to deliver a consistent volume of qualified sales opportunities by communicating pragmatically within the overall buying process.

The Company X programs often have the following pragmatic characteristics:

• Products or solutions offered in a complex selling environment

• Requires multiple decision makers to be engaged

• ROI based decision making process

• Prospect business intelligence is critical

• Subject matter expertise is required for conversion

Pragmatism leads to consistent sales flow with quality business connections.

“… pragmatism sounds boring, but it is not. It is exciting. It is sometimes surprising. It can deliver upon hopes. And it is always enjoyed when it is delivered well, delivered consistently and delivers results.”

I was recently asked by an interesting B2B company to write some blog posts and new business direct mail thoughts. They were interesting because <a> they wanted to focus on a smarter, more intelligent, level of thinking in their communication <b> they truly had an ‘edge’ to them in terms of attitude, and <c> they were interested in taking on specific objections they hear day in and day out in a candid fashion. It was fun for me and I generated maybe 20 draft thoughts for them in less than 3 days. The following shares my favorites <in rough draft form and the name of the company removed>.

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to 20% of the population.

And that’s not all: 20% of workers do 80% of the work; 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crimes; 20% of car drivers cause 80% of the accidents; 20% of hedge funds invest 80% of the money; 20% of pub-goers consume 80% of the alcohol. We wear 20% of the clothes we have in our wardrobes and spend 80% of our time with 20% of our friends. In business meetings, 80% of the decisions are made in 20% of the time, and 20% of a company’s clients (products) are responsible for 80% of its turnover.

Of course, the Pareto rule cannot be applied to everything (mathematicians prefer the more precise ’64/4’ rule, because 80% of 80 is 64 and 20% of 20 is 4). But anybody who wants to plan their time optimally should know that roughly 20% of the time spent on a task leads to 80% of the results.

——–

Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschappeler

The Pareto rule applies to B2B sales engineering, although, if you google “Pareto and B2B sales” you would never know it.

All you will see is article after article about how 20% of a sales force generates 80% of the sales. One would wonder, Company X included, why no one has thought about the sales process and Pareto to better understand the sales force dynamic.

Think about it.

A typical sales force will invest 80% of their energy on 20% of the targets on their list <which ultimately give back 80% of sales>.

Sales forces are hunters and they will try and squeeze out everything they can from the most prosperous looking hunting grounds. On occasion, as they dabble in the rest of the target possibilities, they will uncover a new ‘hunt’ and invest energy <typically shedding one of the non-producers on their current 20% focused list>. This new additional hunt happens just often enough that someone on the outside looking in would think the entire database is being worked equally and sales are being engineered efficiently & effectively.

Here is the main problem with what we just outlined.

Typically only about 20% of target decision makers may be active in the buying process at any given point. The likelihood that the 20% a sales force is working on and the 20% who are actively in the buying process are exactly the same is … well … 0%.

Okay.

Mathematically it would actually mean at any given point the sales force is actually able to work 20% of the 20%. Let’s make that … well … less than 5% of the target database is being managed effectively.

Some of our numbers may not be exactly right but you get our point.

To be fair <to sales forces>. Salespeople are motivated by money and that incentive plans drives their behavior. It is human nature to seek the 20% and make a sale.

Let’s highlight the two main issues that arise when viewing this while Pareto and typical sales force behavior:

1. It’s really 64/4.

Sales engineering also follows the Pareto Rule although we will stick with the more precise 64/4 rule.

At any given point only 64% of your target decision makers in your target list are “good” and active.

And only about 4% <or a little above> will want to have a real sales meeting in a month. Yet, a typical sales force is at best effectively interacting with only 50% of both pools of decision makers. In other words … only 32% of your list is being worked and you are missing half of possible meeting opportunities because your sales force isn’t even interacting with them.

Click here to see how Company X maximizes meeting opportunities.

<link here for ‘maximizing sales meetings’ in Methodology>

2. Behavior is hard to change: leaving a 20% you feel you can make a sale with means changing how you think about building a sale.

Every experienced salesperson has a constant eye on their sales targets. The biggest issue in sales engineering is that salespeople, like most people and the markets they serve, are reluctant to change. Yet change and adaptability is the key to engineering a buying process with multiple decision makers. Behavior can really only be changed in a sales process by taking many of the decision away from the sales people, who know how to close but are maybe a little less savvy about weaving their way thru nudging someone own a purchase cycle, and placing the decisions into the hands of, well, the decision makers. Decision maker cues should drive sales engineering actions.

Change can occur when you take emotional, or perceived ‘sales instincts’, out of the sales engineering and replace it with ‘stimulus-response’ methodology.

Click here to see how Company X engineers education outbound off of decision maker cues <insert link here for the engineering aspect of the Model>

You shouldn’t ignore the 80% of decision makers in your database simply because they are not actively in the buying process. In fact, we would argue you should invest smartly against this 80% if you want to generate consistent better sales results. That investment in time an energy pas off in better understanding the potential customers, find out when they’re ready to buy, and ultimately generate the best returns from your sales and marketing activities.

Engineering the 80% is not about making a short term sales but rather the long term understanding of motivations, interests, and their unique purchase journey. In fact, engineering the 80% effectively creates an increasingly efficient sales effort against the actual active 20%. Through learning and constant connection with decision makers you actually impose your will against the buying process and in understanding the decision maker and the environment you can actually pick and choose contacts to get better sales more often.

We have shared many numbers and lots of math <probably some bad math>.

But suffice it to say Pareto was a smart man.

If only 4% of your target decision makers are actively in the ‘time to make a purchase decision’ mode at any given point, a business’s margin of error is incredibly small and the window of sales opportunity is well defined, but also small.

Company X knows how to effectively affect decision makers at the right time, the right place and the right message to create the right amount of consistent sales a business deserves.

I was recently asked by an interesting B2B company to write some blog posts and new business direct mail thoughts. They were interesting because <a> they wanted to focus on a smarter, more intelligent, level of thinking in their communication <b> they truly had an ‘edge’ to them in terms of attitude, and <c> they were interested in taking on specific objections they hear day in and day out in a candid fashion. It was fun for me and I generated maybe 20 draft thoughts for them in less than 3 days. The following shares my favorites <in rough draft form and the name of the company removed>.

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If there was ever a Latin phrase which encapsulated B2B sales and sales development it would be festina lente <make haste slowly or patiently>.

Think about it.

Successful sales engineering is all about the combination of patience and timely haste. Unfortunately, sales forces are infamous for their lack of patience. Their skill is the efficient close and not the patient hunt.

In addition, the successful sales engineering patience has to be overlaid with a decision making efficiency. Once again, sales forces are infamous for their sense of urgency and, as US President Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly once said:

‘The most urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones’.

Maybe the most important part of festina lente in B2B sales engineering is deciphering the urgent from the non-urgent and the important from the unimportant. Misreading any of these things may create haste on sales part at the wrong time and waste energy & focus and, at its worst, cost a sale.

Patient sales engineering modeling at its most simplest is grounded in the The Eisenhower Matrix. While Stephen Covey is often credited with the decision making matrix it was actually Dwight Eisenhower, considered a master of time management, who developed the matrix.

With over two decades of B2B sales engineering experience and 1000’s of lead generation expertise we at Company X have found that distinguishing between what is important and what is urgent when in sales is infinitely difficult.

Sales forces, with good intentions to make a sale, often focus too strongly on the ‘urgent and important’ field, on the things they feel have to be dealt with immediately to either not lose the sale or to make the sale.

Here is the unfortunate truth for a sales force.

B2B sales is all about having the ability to do everything as and when it needs to be done. This means that not reading what is important and misreading the ‘when’ with decision makers and not getting things done promptly have consequences.

This means that if the situation is misread a sales person is far too often forced to make decisions based on limited or ambiguous information.

On the other hand, when done well, when implemented in an effective Engineering Model, decision making and consequences is actually a patient methodical process.

At the beginning of the process, when the finer details have yet to be clarified, there is a need to be bolder in our decision-making – particularly because these early decisions have the most far-reaching consequences. And toward the end of the buying process as the decision maker nears a real decision, and when we know more and have fewer doubts about what to say & do, there are less fundamental things to decide.

This is called the Consequences Model created by the Danish organization theorists Kristian Kreiner and Søren Christensen.

Philosophically this means the most important question in a B2B sales engineering process is how we can bridge the chasm between doubt and decision.

Sales forces and sales people tend to do this by ‘feel’ or ‘gut.’

Company X does this through patiently providing stimulus and assessing cues and responding to those cues.

The Company X Methodology clearly reflects the extent of the consequences of decisions as they relate to the extent of knowledge. Time and time again over 1000’s of lead generation programs Company X has patiently gathered knowledge and made the right decisions with regard to the right messages to the right people and the consequences have been consistent sales meeting acquisition and ultimately sales success.

I was recently asked by an interesting B2B company to write some blog posts and new business direct mail thoughts. They were interesting because <a> they wanted to focus on a smarter, more intelligent, level of thinking in their communication <b> they truly had an ‘edge’ to them in terms of attitude, and <c> they were interested in taking on specific objections they hear day in and day out in a candid fashion. It was fun for me and I generated maybe 20 draft thoughts for them in less than 3 days. The following shares my favorites <in rough draft form and the name of the company removed>.

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Most people in sales are optimists. They project sales growth and project a sense of anticipation for what a sales force will do for an organization.

This seemingly realistic anticipation tends to only find itself mired in disappointment <with some extraordinary peaks of excitement when something goes well>.

Let’s call this constant chafing between anticipation & disappointment ‘Anticipointment’ – where high optimistic expectations are followed by a letdown.

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anticipointment

n. A state of mind produced after having overly-anticipated a particular event or purchase, thus creating unreasonably high expectations, and then been disappointed after the event or purchase has taken place because the expectations were not met.

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If you are involved in sales development & the actual sales presentation you likely been there and, if honest, more than once.

That said, if you think about this thing called ‘Anticipointment’ you will recognize what Company X recognize – it burdens sales development, negotiations as well as a sale itself.

This burden is actually rooted in something called “anticipated pleasure.’

Research suggests that anticipated pleasure, or conversely anticipated pain, is almost as powerful a motivator as the actual pleasure or pain feelings.

This all means that when making a decision, even on something that no longer gives any pleasure, you will most likely use the emotions you might experience as a result of the choice as the reason you make the choice.

This happens in sales planning and sales projections all the time. As we write this we get a queasy feeling and think of the infamously horrible thought which we hear far too often in business:

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“I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll feel it when I find it.”

–

Sonya Tecla

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Anticipointment is unnecessary particularity in the B2B business world. A business should know what to look for in sales and sales development and shouldn’t have to ‘feel it when they find it.’

Sales should be anticipated as predictable, consistent and, on rare occasions, surprisingly good.

Sales engineering is intelligently designed and intelligently implemented – delivered consistently time after time and delivering predictable consistent results. The result is a gain in sales development productivity, efficiency in the sales process and increased effectiveness in final engagement. The engine consistently runs and adapts as the environment dictates to shift based on needs analysis.

I was recently asked by an interesting B2B company to write some blog posts and new business direct mail thoughts. They were interesting because <a> they wanted to focus on a smarter, more intelligent, level of thinking in their communication <b> they truly had an ‘edge’ to them in terms of attitude, and <c> they were interested in taking on specific objections they hear day in and day out in a candid fashion. It was fun for me and I generated maybe 20 draft thoughts for them in less than 3 days. The following shares my favorites <in rough draft form and the name of the company removed>.

===

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Let us tell you what happens when you sit down with a business sales force and ask them about their sales process and results.

You will see lots of process charts, maybe a beautifully designed methodology, most likely some type of pipeline report <which is impossible to decipher> and a total success rate <which is always good yet internally there are always lots of questions about it>.

And then you ask “the question.”

“… wow … good stuff … you must have good consistent sales month to month … what does that look like?

Oops.

Chaos.

Even with all the process and methodology and ongoing training, when asked if there is consistent meeting & sales flow on a monthly basis, chaos erupts.

In fact the discussion can often edge into a slightly absurd point of view that sales engineering is slightly like trying to get your hands around chaos.

This is what most people see when they view sales organizations. Despite the rigor that goes into sale training and sales development it can often quite easily look like organized chaos. In fact far too often sale people even encourage the thought it can be a lot like chaos <let’s call that ‘job security’> and therefore it is difficult to manage or even predict results.

I mean, c’mon, how can you predict something in a chaotic environment?

Let’s be clear.

Sales is not chaos theory nor chaos management. Therefore sales can be predicted and be consistent with the right model, the right methodology and the right people managing the model and methodology.

Defining an effective engineering model

Sales engineering CAN look chaotic from a 10,000 foot view.

And when we encounter chaos, we seek ways to structure it, to see through it, or at least to gain an overview of it. Models help us to reduce the complexity of a situation by enabling us to suppress most of it and concentrate on what is important WHEN it is important. Now, critics like to point out that models do not reflect reality. That is true, but it is wrong to claim that they compel us to think in a prescribed way.

Models should not define what or how we should think. We believe, and our actions with the Company X Model reflect, that they should be a reflection of an active thought process.

Interestingly, Americans tend towards a trial-and-error approach – they do something, fail, learn from this, acquire theories and try again. This is more about improving.

Europeans tend to begin by acquiring theories, then doing something. If they then fail, they analyze, improve and repeat the attempt.

Luckily, a well tested model can accommodate both the American & European view. An effective model explains how everything is connected, how we should act and what we should and should not do. We often believe so strongly in models that they take on the status of reality. And that is a good thing if the model does reflect reality. The danger in a model is that sometimes they can actually prevent us from seeing things for what they really are. In fact we believe it is this danger that most sales people sense and therefore avoid models when possible.

Suffice it to say, an effective model should have a solid construct with the ability to morph according to new data and new stimulus <or decision maker cues>.

There is something called The Morphological Box which explains why you have to be structured in order to have the ability to effectively morph.

In the 1930s, the Swiss physicist Fritz Zwicky at the Institute of Technology in California developed a problem-solving method using what he called morphological boxes, in which a new entity is developed by combining the attributes of a variety of existing entities. This method, which was initially applied by Zwicky to jet engine technology, and now is often used in marketing strategies, innovation strategy and the development of new ideas.

The Company X Model effectively morphs within the model. We created an effective model like this because while innovative ideas can mean doing something completely new more often than not it means making a new combination of things that already exist.

Which leads us to “the people.”

Two thoughts.

1. Models are only as good as the person who uses it.

2. Sales people, in particular, balk at consistent use of models.

Combine those two thoughts and you can imagine how chaos occurs even if you have the best model.

Sales people, even the best of the best, feel models are restrictive and do not permit the flexible ‘hunting when the iron is hot’ <opportunistic pursuit of sales>.

Let’s remind everyone that possibly the most dangerous words in sales engineering are ‘this time it’s different’<Sir John Templeton>.

Effective sales engineering is actually built on isolating ‘this time is the same’ and taking advantage of those opportunities. And while this may appear to be ‘adapting’ it is not. It is simply having a solid system in place to be able to track stimulus so that responses are triggered.

I was recently asked by an interesting B2B company to write some blog posts and new business direct mail thoughts. They were interesting because <a> they wanted to focus on a smarter, more intelligent, level of thinking in their communication <b> they truly had an ‘edge’ to them in terms of attitude, and <c> they were interested in taking on specific objections they hear day in and day out in a candid fashion. It was fun for me and I generated maybe 20 draft thoughts for them in less than 3 days. The following shares my favorites <in rough draft form and the name of the company removed>.

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It may seem counter intuitive when your B2B sales program includes 100’s of target companies and 1000’s of decision makers involved to state that B2B sales development is often like threading a needle.

Yet, the uncomfortable truth about engineering sales is all those massive spreadsheets and contact reports come down to the ability to thread the needle and tie up the sale.

Sales engineering takes a steady hand, calm, patient focus and the ability to slide the important information thru a sometimes very small window of opportunity. This creates some problems in implementing sales programs.

Sales programs sometimes struggle to balance the sheer volume aspect and the threading the needle aspect.

In addition, sales people tend to do what they do best and avoid doing what they don’t do best <and also tend to focus on the ‘make money aspect’>.

Let’s take the threading the needle aspect one step farther to the fact in sales, well, most often you get one chance. B2B sales can be brutal in this aspect. The opportunity to make the sale arises once within a very long cycle. We state this to note mistakes, even a minor one; at any stage in the buying process will have major consequences.

This is where Swiss cheese comes in.

The most impressive illustration of the causes and effects of mistakes is the human error or Swiss cheese model by James Reason.

Healthcare example of Swiss Cheese & Colossal mistakes

The model compares the different levels on which mistakes occur with slices of Swiss cheese.

In a mistake-free world, the cheese would have no holes. But in the real world, the cheese is cut into thin slices, and every slice has many holes that are in different places in different slices. Imagine the holes as conduits for mistakes. A mistake remains unnoticed or irrelevant if it penetrates only one hole in one of the slices. But it can lead to catastrophe if the holes in the different slices align and the mistake passes through all the holes in all of the defenses.

Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschäppeler

With any, and every, B2B sales engineering process there contains multiple slices of swiss cheese where when finally stacked in a process often contain unnoticed mistakes which have fatal consequences in B2B sales.

That is why a sales process needs engineering – an engine that gets tuned and checked not assessing human action but rather engine effectiveness.

Now.

Everyone makes mistakes. Some people learn from them, while others repeat them. When it comes to sales and people there are different types of mistake:

• real mistakes – occur when the wrong process is carried out

• black-outs – occur when part of a process is forgotten

• slip-ups – occur when the right process is carried out incorrectly There are various levels on which mistakes occur:

• skill-based – lack of appropriate skills

• rule-based – program rules/guidelines dictate behavior

• knowledge-based – lack of necessary knowledge

Company X knows that understanding the potential issues, let’s call them “the slices of swiss cheese”, is the first step to solving the issues – which is all incorporated into the Company X Model.

Interestingly <at least to us> whether we realized it or not when we developed our sales engineering model we incorporated THE DOUBLE-LOOP LEARNING MODEL to minimize mistakes, efficiently thread the needle and make sure the Swiss cheese holes never lined up.

Double-loop learning involves reflecting on actions and learning from them.

Double loop learning is based on the idea of ‘second order observation’ a theory developed by theoreticians Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann.

First-order observers see things as they appear to them. For them, the world is simply there.

Second-order observers, on the other hand, attribute what the first-order observers see to how they see it. In other words, second-order observers observe a way of observing.

For example, you criticize a football referee for making a wrong decision, you are a second-order observer: your perspective is different from the referee’s because you are one step removed from the game and not actually calling the play, and you think that makes you a better judge.

During the act of observing, first-order observers are unaware of their own way of observing – it is their blind spot. Recognizing this blind spot enables second-order observers to become the ‘improvers’ of observations. They are able to point out to the first-order observers that it is possible to observe differently and thus see things differently.

The Company X Model is an effectively intertwined first & second observer methodology enabling the best of the first observer with the oversight of skilled second observer.

The psychologist Chris Argyris and the philosopher Donald Schön developed double-loop learning out of these theoretical ideas on observation. In the best-case scenario, the single loop <the first-order observation> is best practice.

Something that works well is not changed but simply repeated.

In the worst-case scenario it is worst practice – the same mistake is repeated, or a problem is solved without questioning how it arose in the first place.

In double-loop learning you think about and question what you are doing, and try to break your own pattern, not simply by doing something differently, but by thinking about why you do it the way you do it and the objectives behind the behavior. This suggests that if are fully aware of objectives/actions you may be able to change them.

The problem inherent in the double loop is the discrepancy between what we say we are about to do and what we actually do. If we really want to change something, it is not enough to create guidelines for our employees or ourselves, or to give directives. Real changes occur when we reassess our more deeply rooted reasons & objectives.

That may sound like a bunch of theoretical bullshit, however, we say all that because the Company X Model not only creates a steady hand but also constantly loops new information into the model so cues are constantly evaluated and stimulus adapts.